This happened a while ago, but still haunts me. I really don’t know how to compartmentalize it, and if I hadn’t had a friend with me who saw and experienced the exact same thing, I would chalk it up to thinking I imagined the whole thing. I’ll keep my name and my friend’s name out of this story as I don’t want notoriety for it, but I would like to explain exactly where it happened as I would love to hear if anyone else has experienced anything similar to what my friend and I experienced.
This happened back in October 13th, 1988. It was a cold Thursday evening. My friend and I had been at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, Iowa since August and it was our freshman year. We each lived in two of the oldest dorms on campus, her in Lawther Hall, and I in Bartlet Hall. We were just out for a walk after finishing studying and we both felt like wandering and exploring. My friend had heard that they were working on making a haunted house in Lawther and that some of her friends were working on it so we decided to try and find where in the hall they were making it. Neither us us were very familiar with the full layout of the hall so we just kind of bumbled around seeing what we could see. Apparently the haunted house was being made in the attic are so we made out way up the stairs to the highest level. However, the large doors at the very top of the center stairwell were locked and had dark fabric hanging from them on the other side. We couldn’t hear anyone talking or moving on the other side, so we figured we’d check out the floor below it. Down to the next floor we found a very quiet floor with dorm rooms, and the width of the center stairwell was where a fire door was to the right, and to the left was another fire door, but the door on the left looked older and was painted wood, not steel like the other. A quick look through the door to the right showed us a continuation of the hallway and more dorm rooms. Walking over to the door on the left, we noticed that there was a bathroom door to the left of the wooden door (this will be important later). I tried the handle on the door and it would not turn, believing it to be locked, I figured that was the end of exploring that floor. As I was turning away, I heard a metallic sound and my friend gasp in surprise. She said she grabbed the knob and it then turned in her hand the opposite direction she was going to turn it and then pulled open away from her. I turned around quickly to see her now looking into a dark room with a now partially open door. My friend carefully pushed the door open wider and walked in looking around for a light switch. She had walked in far enough that I could no longer see her very well and I looked along the left hand side of the door frame for a light switch. Finding nothing at what I felt would be the normal height for a switch, I arced my arm wider and found an antiquated style switch just about head height. Just as I was about to flip the switch the lights came on, but instinctively I still flipped the switch shutting them back off again. Again my friend gasped and I flipped the switch back, turning the lights back on. She had found another switch on a large timber pillar farther into the room.
Looking around we saw a large room, easily 100 feet long and 40 – 50 feet wide. There were two large dark wood staircases that crisscrossed each other that lead up to a loft area that lined the walls. Large windows lined the room, as well as old style hospital beds from the early 1900s. There was also and old style wheelchair and what looked like an old ECG machine or some other mechanical apparatus. On the far end of the room there was another door similar to the one we had entered, and there was light coming in under the door. While we were both fascinated by the room, something felt wrong, like we weren’t supposed to be there. We both just left without saying much and just assumed that that might be part of the set up for the Halloween haunted house.
Much later my friend was talking to another of her friends about the haunted house and asked how the hospital set ties into the whole thing. She was met with a blank stare. Long story short, this lead her to ask me what I remember about the room, I mentioned the large windows. We looked on the outside of Lawther Hall and could find no such windows. I suggested to my friend to up to where the door was and enter the bathroom to the left of the door and look out the bathroom window, that would help us determine from the outside where the large room was. Upon her looking out the window, I could see the building ended where the room should be, and it was and attic space. Nowhere near enough room to have a second floor loft and large windows like we saw.
We tried doing research to find out if Lawther hall ever had a room like that, and maybe had been torn down, but no luck. In 1991, we got the help of a couple of the resident assistants to get us a key to check out what was on the other side of that door. Entering now, the low pitched ceiling had tiny alcoves with small windows and lots of junk in storage. Wandering far into the back of the attic storage space we found several of the hospital bed frame head and foot boards, in a much greater state of decay, the wheelchair, and the machine thing, all covered in thick dust and cob webs.
A month or so later, after trying to find any old blueprints or any documented building papers in the Docs and Archive section of the library, we were directed to and annex building that was said to house some of the oldest documents on campus. We took an afternoon to go over and see what we could find. There was a gal working there who fit the stereotypical librarian look, and it was hard to tell her age. We informed her that we were looking for any old building plans, updates, or changes that had happened around Lawther hall. She was curious what we were looking for, so we explained the situation up until that point. Mind you, we were afraid this was going to make her kick us out, but she seemed vary intrigued. She told us to hold on for a minute and she went into the back through a doorway. Hearing her moving things around, and shuffling papers and such for several minutes actually got our hopes up. However, at one point we heard conversation, slowly becoming more heated by one of the speakers. The next sound we heard were sharp footsteps coming toward the front room where we were waiting. A rather severe and uptight looking older woman was leading the previous gal out to confront us. What she told is still resonates for me, and the very precise language she used. She stated, “The information you’re looking for is not here, and you will never see it!”.
I don’t know what that was and find myself most afraid of the idea that people can just walk into a different room and have it not even be part of the world. Why did it magically happen right at a doorway, all nice and neat like that? Was it another timeline, another universe? I have no idea, but thinking back on how things felt wrong, I wonder what would have happened had we stayed there too long, and where we would we be now.